Violent men’s paths to batterer intervention programmes: masculinity, turning points and narrative selves

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on interviews with voluntary participants in intervention programmes for perpetrators of intimate partner violence in Sweden, the present article analyses violent men’s turning-point stories, that is, their narratives of deciding to start and starting treatment. Three types of turning-point stories are identified: narratives that describe men recognizing their violence either before or during treatment, and narratives of returning to treatment. Through these stories, the men not only present reasons for joining therapy, but also produce gendered narrative selves. In particular they present themselves as morally ‘good’ and self-conscious men by simultaneously acknowledging their abusive behaviour and distancing themselves from being violent men.